When Boomers buy back their childhood homes

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A teenage Elizabeth Crews, tucked away in her second-floor bedroom, thought her parents were oblivious to her antics.

Thirty years later, she knows better.

Crews' 13-year-old daughter Margaret is camped in her old room, and Elizabeth and her husband, Sam, are in the master bedroom on the first floor, the one her parents used to share.

"I can hear every time she's dancing and singing up there," Crews said. "I thought Mom and Dad didn't know what I was doing. Now I know they heard everything."

You learn things like that when you return to your childhood home.

Memories flood back when you check out something as simple as scratches on the door from a long-ago puppy, see the pencil markings of a family growth chart on the wall, or look with frustration at the bathtub faucet, still dripping after all these years.

Whether their parents have moved to smaller houses, retirement homes or, in the Crews' case, the house behind theirs, some Baby Boomers find themselves settling down in familiar territory -- the house where they grew up.

The practice probably is pronounced particularly among Southerners, said Gary B. Melton, a professor and director of the Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life at Clemson University.

"Sense of place, expressed through attachment to family and community, is perhaps the essence of Southern culture," he said.

"Personal identity -- even one's name -- is based on family. Family life provides us with continuity -- connections within the community and across the generations. It should be unsurprising that many people find solace and meaning in the physical structure that they associate with their families."

Southerners who move away from home commonly return, he said: "The lure that brings people back to their home state undoubtedly is also the attraction that pulls people back to the family homestead."

Some families who have "moved home" did so only from a few miles -- or blocks -- away.

Elizabeth Clark's parents approached her and her husband, Emery, about moving from Columbia's Wales Garden neighborhood to the Heathwood home in which she grew up.

Her mother, Joyce Sumwalt, had been ready to downsize for a while.

"One Sunday, my dad called and said, `Mama's found a house, and I'll buy it if y'all will buy our house,' " Clark said. "It was a little stunning."

The Clark family decided to move with their two children to the house; it had more room and a swimming pool.

"The only way Dad would leave the house was if [my brother] Robert or I would move in," Clark said. "He still comes over all the time. He still has a key."

Clark said moving back to the family home was never something she gave much thought to. But she said the transition was smooth. They had always spent time there, enjoying the pool and celebrating holidays.

"My parents entertained a lot, and a lot of people have fond memories of fun times here," she said. "It's a gracious house. We'd like to be able to carry on that tradition."

To return home, Mary and Scott Elliott moved only a few blocks, from Devereaux Road to Belmont Drive in Heathwood.

Mary Elliott's parents moved to a smaller home in WildeWood from the house on Belmont, the one Mary lived in her entire childhood.

While her parents also were looking to downsize, her mother's attachment to the home ran deep.

"I believe she would not have moved if she was selling the house to strangers," Scott Elliott said. "It's really a sweet concept."

Mary Elliott's parents, Douglas and Frances Montgomery, were the original owners of the home.

"Frances was a devoted mom and raised two kids. Her second love was this house," Scott Elliott said.

Now the Elliotts are raising their three children in the four-bedroom house.

The house is the gathering place for the whole family, with 40 or 50 people attending Thanksgiving festivities.

Crews had lived in the family house near with her three younger siblings since she was in sixth grade.

When her parents, Frank and Margaret Wyman, decided they didn't want so much upkeep, her mother suggested Elizabeth, her husband, Sam, and their three children eventually move in. First, they bought and renovated the smaller house directly behind her parents' home. For a while both families lived together in the Crews' childhood home, and then her parents moved in to the smaller house.

"It's worked out great to have your parents in the back yard. We have one swimming pool between us," she said. "Daddy and I are always trying to change the property line. We each want the pool in August and don't want the upkeep in January."

Now, Crews is in charge of Thanksgiving and Christmas meals and all the big, family get-togethers.

But here's the big question: How do you navigate the potential minefield of hurt feelings when the decorating ideas you have for your childhood home don't completely coincide with your parents' taste?

Clark said she did little work after they moved into the house. They renovated the kitchen, redid the hardwood floors and painted the den.

Her mother has been very accepting of the changes, she said.

Mary Elliott said her mother, too, was supportive.

"My mother wanted us to do whatever we wanted to make it our house," she said.

The Elliotts pulled up the carpeting, refinished the hardwood floors, painted and wallpapered several rooms, and renovated the kitchen.

"In the vast majority, she was delighted, and if she wasn't, we didn't know about it," Scott Elliott said.